This application claims priority to Japanese Patent Application No. 2014-000064, filed Jan. 6, 2014, the entirety of which is incorporated by reference herein.
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus such as an ink jet-type recording apparatus and a method of controlling the liquid ejecting apparatus, and particularly to a liquid ejecting apparatus that applies a drive waveform included in a drive signal to a pressure generating unit and thereby drives the pressure generating unit, which causes a pressure change to occur in a liquid inside a pressure chamber that communicates with a nozzle, and thereby ejects the liquid from the nozzle, and to a method of controlling the liquid ejecting apparatus.
2. Related Art
A liquid ejecting apparatus includes a liquid ejecting head and ejects (discharges) various liquids from the liquid ejecting head. An Example of the liquid ejecting apparatus includes an image recording apparatus such as an ink jet-type printer or an ink jet-type plotter. Recently, the liquid ejecting apparatus has been applied to various manufacturing apparatuses due to its characteristics of being capable of causing a very small amount of liquid to land to a predetermined position with accuracy. For example, the liquid ejecting apparatus is applied to a display manufacturing apparatus that manufactures a color filter such as a liquid crystal display, an electrode producing apparatus that produces an electrode, such as an organic electro luminescence (EL) display or a surface-emitting display (FED), and a chip manufacturing apparatus that manufactures a bio chip (biochemical component). A recording head for the image recording apparatus ejects liquid-phase ink, a color-material ejecting head for the display manufacturing apparatus ejects solutions of respective color materials which are red (R), green (G), and blue (G). In addition, an electrode-material ejecting head for the electrode producing apparatus ejects a liquid-phase electrode material and a bio-organic material ejecting head for the chip manufacturing apparatus ejects a solution of bio-organic material.
The liquid ejecting head mounted on the liquid ejecting apparatus includes, for example, a piezoelectric element, a heating element, or an electrostatic actuator as a pressure generating unit that causes a pressure change to occur in a liquid inside a pressure chamber which communicates with a nozzle from which the liquid is ejected and ejects the liquid from the nozzle. In the liquid ejecting apparatus, a drive waveform (drive pulse) generated by a drive signal generator is applied to the pressure generating unit and thereby the pressure generating unit is driven, which causes the liquid to be ejected. In a configuration in which, while the liquid ejecting head is caused to perform a relative movement with respect to a landing target of the liquid, the liquid ejecting head ejects the liquid from the nozzle and a landing pattern such as an image is formed on the landing target, the liquid ejecting apparatus is configured to cause the drive waveform to be generated at a timing based on position information generated in accordance with the movement of the liquid ejecting head so as to cause the liquid to land at an aimed position on the landing target with accuracy.
In the liquid ejecting apparatus in the related art, acceleration or deceleration of the liquid ejecting head is performed in a region separated from the outer side of a liquid ejecting region in a head movement direction on the landing target (for example, in the case of the printer, region on which an image or the like is practically recorded on a recording sheet) such that ejection of the liquid is not performed in acceleration and deceleration sections. That is, the ejection of the liquid is performed only in a constant speed section of the liquid ejecting head. Incidentally, recently, a configuration is employed, in which the acceleration/deceleration (operation of direction change) of the liquid ejecting head is performed even in the liquid ejecting region on the landing target and ejection of the liquid is performed in these acceleration and deceleration sections so as to shorten the moving distance of the liquid ejecting head as much as possible such that the configuration satisfies a request for improvement of a speed of the liquid ejection process and miniaturization of the apparatus. However, when the ink is ejected using the same drive waveform in both the constant speed section and the acceleration and deceleration sections, the moving speed of the liquid ejecting head is slower compared to a constant moving speed of the liquid ejecting head in the constant speed section. Thus, a landing position of the liquid is varied on the landing target. Therefore, a configuration is also proposed, in which the drive waveform is changed between the constant speed section and the acceleration/deceleration sections and thereby landing variation of the liquid is suppressed (for example, see JP-A-2000-280469).
Incidentally, in the liquid ejecting apparatus described above, there is a concern that behavior of a meniscus in a nozzle is disturbed due to residual vibration after ejection of the liquid, which affects the subsequent ejection operation of the liquid. Therefore, in the constant speed section, the ejection operation is adjusted to a generation timing of the drive waveform (that is, ejection timing of the liquid) such that the effect of the residual vibration is as small as possible. However, since the moving speed of the liquid ejecting head is not constant in the acceleration/deceleration sections, the generation timing of the drive waveform is not constant either. Thus, the timing causes the ejection of the liquid to be unstable due to the residual vibration as described above in some cases.